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Bread Sauce

A warm sauce made from bread, onion, garlic, pepper, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Remove the crust from the bread slices and place them in an enamel bowl.

  2. Peel the onion and insert the cloves into it, then place it in the center of the bread.

  3. Add pepper, salt, and enough milk to cover the bread.

Cook and finish

  1. Cover with a saucer and place in a warm oven (350 °F / 175 °C).

  2. Once done, remove the onion and beat the mixture well.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaks up milk and swells into a soft, thick body that gives the sauce its texture.
Milk
Softens the bread and carries flavour, forming the liquid base of the sauce.
Onion
Releases its aroma slowly into the milk, flavouring the sauce as it steeps.
Cloves
Infuse warm, aromatic spice into the milk while it steeps with the onion.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture well. Once the bread has softened in the hot milk, it must be beaten thoroughly so the starch-rich crumb breaks down evenly and the sauce becomes smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, clove, pepper, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, clove, pepper, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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